


The Elephant

by an0neemouse



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Cancer, Chemotherapy, Death, Drug Use, Grief, Loss, M/M, Medical marijuana, No happy ending here, Non-Explicit Sex, Song Lyrics, Song fic, jason isbell - Freeform, pot, the elephant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 15:04:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18478690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/an0neemouse/pseuds/an0neemouse
Summary: Based off the song Elephant by Jason Isbell.





	The Elephant

**Author's Note:**

> I cried writing this. Read at your own discretion.

She said, "Andy, you're better than your past"  
Winked at me and drained her glass  
Cross-legged on a barstool, like nobody sits anymore  
She said, "Andy, you're taking me home"  
But I knew she planned to sleep alone  
I'd carry her to bed, sweep up the hair from her floor

~*~

A boisterous laugh drags Chanyeol’s attention out of his glass and over to the man next to him, heart clenching at the sight of those beautiful eyes scrunched up in adorable little crescents. “God, Baek. I’m trying to have a pity party here.”

“Yeollie, you’re better than your past.” Baekhyun tells him still smiling but far more sober than the veritable graveyard of glasses in front of him would indicate. “You don’t need them. This is a new chapter for you.”

“I need an income.” Chanyeol argues stomach clenching at just the thought. 

“They don’t deserve you.” Baekhyun tells him rocking back on his bar stool so that Chanyeol reaches out and catches him, supporting his shoulders. A delighted laugh bubbles out of his throat. “You’ll have a new job before you know it.”

“At least put your legs down if you’re gonna act like an idiot.” Chanyeol says voice tight as he watches the other man push back against him, legs folded underneath him on the top of his bar stool. “You’re gonna get hurt.”

“You know what you should do?” Baekhyun says smiling contentedly at the other man. 

“What?” Chanyeol asks with a shake of his head. He should have known his words would fall on deaf ears. 

“You should become a nurse.” Baekhyun tells him seriously. 

“A nurse?” Chanyeol parrots and finally relaxes when Baekhyun stops rocking and slumps forward against the bar. He takes the opportunity to take a big swig of his drink, needing to be far more drunk if he’s going to listen to Baekhyun’s thoughts for his life. 

“Yeah.” Baekhyun mirrors the move, smacking his lips at the sweet tang of the cider as it slides down his throat. “You’re smart and caring. You’ve been wasted in business.”

“Glad you think so.” Chanyeol says grumpily thinking about how he was let go this morning. His boss never bothered to even give him an explanation, just handed him the pink slip and told him to clear his desk. Losing his job would be bad enough but knowing he wasn’t even worth the time of day it would take to explain why was an even harsher blow. But maybe Baekhyun is on to something. It’s not like he has any love for business, it’s just what he got into after college. But it wouldn’t hurt to go back, find something else, something that fits him better. 

“Yeollie?” 

“Yes?”

Baekhyun pauses a minute and drains his glass. “You’re taking me home. Let’s go.”

The bartender flicks Chanyeol a knowing look but he ignores it. He’ll take Baekhyun home and he’ll put him in bed. They’ve done this a time or two before so he knows how it will go. The other will stay awake just long enough to brush his teeth, pound a glass of water, and then he’ll fade out so fast that Chanyeol will barely be able to pour him into bed before he’s unconscious. And when all of that is over Chanyeol will pad back to the bathroom and sweep up the little pile of hairs there. It feels futile to try and keep up with it but he knows that Baekhyun gets sad when he sees the evidence of his falling hair on the floor so he’ll sweep it up again like he’s already done a dozen or so times already.

~*~

If I'd fucked her before she got sick  
I'd never hear the end of it  
She don't have the spirit for that now  
We just drink our drinks and laugh out loud  
And bitch about the weekend crowd  
And try to ignore the elephant somehow  
Somehow

~*~

“Just a little more.” Baekhyun pants, forehead beaded with sweat as he tenses, ready for his orgasm to wash over him. He lays on his back, legs spread as Chanyeol fucks into him, hands clasped as tight as they’ll go around the other man’s biceps. A few weeks ago he would be rocking with him but he doesn’t have the energy anymore so he just lets Chanyeol do the work, knowing he doesn’t really mind. “Just a little more. Yes. That’s it.”

“God you’re beautiful.” Chanyeol pants collapsing low to bury his face against Baekhyun’s sweaty neck. He nuzzles up into the downy mess of what’s left of Baekhyun’s hair and feels a stray strand stick to his nose. 

“You’re only saying that because I let you fuck me.” Baekhyun says gently scratching his nails down Chanyeol’s back. His words are cold but his tone is warm, the joke they both know concealed within the quirk of his lips when he turns his head and presses a kiss to Chanyeol’s cheek. “You wanna go to the bar?”

Chanyeol huffs a little laugh and rolls on his side so he’s not crushing Baekhyun anymore. “Do you want to go to the bar?”

“Yes.” 

“Then let’s go.” Chanyeol was never able to deny him anything and even less so now. He thinks of the old Christmas movie about the man who wishes he’d never been born and how early in the movie he tells his love interest that he’d lasso her the moon. Well, he thinks he knows how that feels because he’d lasso Baekhyun the moon if he asked for it. But since the moon is a little out of their grasp he instead helps him shower off and get dressed, walking arm in arm down the street the five or so blocks to their favorite bar. 

“Fucking tourists.” Baekhyun says elbowing his way up to the bar past the crowd that inevitably congregates each and every weekend. 

“Two beers.” Chanyeol yells above the noise of the crowd when they reach the bar and manage not only to snag a couple seats off to one side of the room but also the bartender’s attention. 

“Do you think they come in here and make snide comments about the fucking regulars the same way we make comments about them?” Baekhyun asks taking a sip of his beer and turning to grace Chanyeol with a mischievous look. 

“I think they probably are just pissed there’s other people in the world to get in the way of their precious vacations.” Chanyeol says taking a long drink and setting his glass down and nodding at a drunk man stumbling around the dance floor. “At least they’re fun to watch.”

Baekhyun lets out that raucous laugh that Chanyeol loves so much. “Yes, they are that.”

~*~

She said, "Andy, you crack me up"  
Seagram's in a coffee cup  
Sharecropper eyes, and the hair almost all gone  
When she was drunk, she made cancer jokes  
Made up her own doctors' notes  
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone

~*~

“Yeol, you crack me up.” 

“It’s not funny, Baek.” Chanyeol says picking up the mostly empty bottle of Seagram’s from next to the coffee pot and putting it back in the cupboard. “You gonna just be drunk all the way to the end?”

“It’s better than waiting for a chemotherapy groupon.” Baekhyun says with tired, twinkling eyes as he takes a deep drink from his coffee cup. 

“Is there even any coffee in there?” Chanyeol asks trying to ignore the barely there patches of hair scattered haphazard across Baekhyun’s head or the angry red patches of irritated skin that make Chaneyol want to bathe the other in lotion and take care of him until he isn’t sick anymore. But then he remembers that that’s exactly what he’s been doing and nothing helps. At this point he’s just trying to make Baekhyun’s time as comfortable as possible. 

“I knew I forgot something.” Baekhyun shoots back, looking up with those dark eyes, equally dark circles underneath them. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, body sore from the medicine that seems to hurt him more than it heals him. 

“You know what would go good with that?” Chanyeol asks knowing neither of them will comment on Baekhyun’s illness, not really. They’ll just keep going and pretend there’s nothing wrong. 

“What?” Baekhyun asks and the look of gratitude he shoots Chanyeol is almost too much for both of them. 

“Let’s take a little edge off.” Chanyeol goes over and grabs the din they keep their pot in. He grabs what he needs and sits down next to Baekhyun, expertly rolling a joint and then lighting it on fire and passing it over to Baekhyun who takes it with a quiet word of thanks, drawing the smoke into his lungs as the pungent odor fills their tiny little house.   
“God that’s good.” Baekhyun sighs passing it over so Chanyeol can take a hit too. 

Chanyeol doesn’t take a long drag, barely enough to satisfy Baekhyun’s need to share and then he passes it back and makes sure Baekhyun smokes the rest. Tears sting the back of his eyes as he watches Baekhyun finally relax into his chair, the pain that constantly pulls at him dulled with the drug. 

“Do we have any popsicles?” Baekhyun asks slumping low in his chair and taking another drag off the joint. When he’s exhaled the smoke he picks up his coffee cup and takes another long drink. “An orange popsicle would go great with this.”

“Did you ever think you’d pair whiskey, pot, and popsicles when you were a kid?” Chanyeol asks getting up and grabbing first the Seagram’s bottle so he can pour one for himself and also refill Baekhyun’s glass. With that done he pads over to the freezer, pulling out two popsicles, cutting the plastic off both and handing the orange one to Baekhyun. 

“Kid-Baekhyun probably would have told you to fuck off if you told him this was our future.” Baekhyun says with a snort but then his words seem to sink in and a couple tears well and fall sticky hot down his cheeks. “This wasn’t what life was supposed to be.”

For a long minute they sit there and cry and drink. Chanyeol rolls another joint, take one drag and hands it over to Baekhyun, making sure he smokes the rest and wipes away his tears before he finally speaks again. “Your family is coming tomorrow.”

Baekhyun just shrugs. “They don’t get it. Nobody gets it.”

It takes everything in him not to get offended but Chanyeol knows that no matter how much he witnesses he’ll never really understand what Baekhyun is going through so he just nods and eats his popsicle. 

“You get it though.” Baekhyun says and those tears he had wiped away are back, burning down his dry cheeks. “You get it. If anyone does, it’s you.”

Chanyeol doesn’t fight it this time. He lets his tears fall too.

~*~

But I'd sing her classic country songs  
And she'd get high and sing along  
She don't have a voice to sing with now  
We burn these joints in effigy  
And cry about what we used to be  
Try to ignore the elephant somehow  
Somehow

~*~

“Play the one about the sad man.” Baekhyun says taking a long drag off his joint. 

“The man of constant sorrow?” Chanyeol clarifies, shifting the guitar on his lap. When Baekhyun nods he plucks out the first bars, heart equal parts heavy and light in his chest as Baekhyun croaks out the lines with him. He remembers when Baekhyun used to sing, voice so beautiful. He’d stop singing just to listen to the other man, cherishing the moments until Baekhyun would notice what he was doing and yell at him that they’re supposed to be singing together. 

Just like old times Chanyeol stops singing, voice fading out and choked with tears as he listens to Baekhyun barely hum along, throat wrecked but too high to care. His heart aches with the inevitability of the future, the inescapability of it. Some day he won’t even be able to listen to this anymore. 

“Hey, you’re supposed to sing with me.” Baekhyun says but he’s crying too and even though neither of them say anything they both know they’re thinking the same thing. 

“Sorry.” Chanyeol says, clearing his throat. “Should we try that one again?”

“Yeah, start over at the top.” 

And they both with they could start life back over at the top too.

~*~

I buried her a thousand times, given up my place in line  
But I don't give a damn about that now  
There's one thing that's real clear to me  
No one dies with dignity  
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow  
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow  
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow  
Somehow  
Somehow

~*~

Chanyeol clenches his teeth but makes sure his hold on Baekhyun’s hand is light. He thinks about the nursing classes Baekhyun made him sign up for for the fall, thinks about going back to school and trying to continue life without his best friend. The thought freezes and congeals, welling up in the tears that Chanyeol refuses to shed. 

“You should be in school now.” Baekhyun says voice tiny and wrecked, every breath an insurmountable effort. 

“No, Baek.” Chanyeol says and he wonders if his voice just is this tight now. “I am right where I should be.”

“You could be halfway done with school by now.” Baekhyun tells him shifting against the pillow. He’s never liked hospitals but they can’t do the IV’s he needs at home and at this point his pain is unmanageable without them. 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

The tears Baekhyun can’t stop anymore well in his eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Chanyeol doesn’t cry then. Or for the next several days as Baekhyun lies in bed broken and fading, lips cracked and skin flushed. He doesn’t cry until his best friend is in the ground and he’s seated on that familiar bar stool by himself, no one next to him to laugh with, no one next to him to cry with. He just cries into his beer and tries to find the strength to face the elephant they ignored so well for so long.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love.


End file.
